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Thoughts On The Middle East

What little expertise I may have is in the Middle East…that region that the US thinks it can bomb into submission….not damn likely.

There is so much news in the Middle East …news that Americans need to know for it will effect their families in the long run…..

Not much is being passed onto the American people about the progress in the Middle East and the events that will shape the future for the region.

1–The Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, the one that has hidden is mother from his father, is said to be trying to re-make the Middle East…….

A few days after Donald Trump was inaugurated, Jared Kushner sat down to decide how to reshape the Middle East. During the campaign, Trump had promised a sweeping transformation of the region. Steve Bannon, Trump’s senior aide and ideologist at the time, told me recently, “Our plan was to annihilate the physical caliphate of ISIS in Iraq and Syria—not attrition, annihilation—and to roll back the Persians. And force the Gulf states to stop funding radical Islam.” The Middle East initiative, Bannon said, was one of the few points of agreement in an otherwise fractious White House. “Jared and I were at war on a number of other topics, but not this.”

Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, was put in charge of policy for the region. He had no experience in diplomacy or in Middle Eastern politics; at thirty-six, he had spent his working life managing New York and New Jersey real-estate projects and running the New York Observer, a fading tabloid. But a former senior defense official who worked with Kushner told me that he had been educating himself on the fly. “He’s not a scholar on this stuff,” the official said. “His knowledge is gained from talking to movers and shakers in that part of the world. You can read a lot of books but never get the type of education you get from talking to the Kissingers and Petraeuses of the world.”

He qualified his comments by stating that a peace agreement would have to be in place with Palestinians.

“I believe the Palestinians and the Israelis have the right to have their own land. But we have to have a peace agreement to assure the stability for everyone and to have normal relations.”

His views are being seen as another public sign of closer ties with Israel, but some also see it as a swipe at Iran, a country with which Saudi Arabia is in dispute on several fronts including war-torn Yemen.

MbS is hedging all his bets….he is so worried about Iran that he will lie down with Israel which could bite him in the ass.

3–The Middle East is changing…but will it be US friendly?

The Middle East has assumed a different shape and structure in recent years. Nowhere is this more visible than in the April 4 meeting in Turkey between Russia, Iran and Turkey. This group has become critical in defining the Middle East. It is not necessarily a cohesive group, and its staying power is uncertain. But for the moment, the United States, formerly the defining power of the region, is moving to the margins, and a new architecture has emerged.

Turkey intends to attack Manbij next, and has long been mad at the US for backing the Kurdish YPG, who is considered terrorists by Turkish officials. France is backing the YPG too, and there have been some suggestions by the French government that troops might go to Manbij.

In part, this is likely intended to be a threat to US and British troops who are already in Manbij. Erdogan has promised to attack and take the Kurdish-held city, and has indicated that they will do so irrespective of who is backing the Kurds.

(antiwar.com)

5–Turkey has decided to occupy parts of Iraq…..

As Turkey’s ground operations against the PKK continue in the northern areas of the Kurdistan Region, Turkish troops have intensified their bombardments and artillery shells, stationing soldiers on top of eight mountains in the past day.

The mountains are located in Sidakan, in northern Erbil province, overlooking Barazgir and Dooramolk plains. With the capture of these mountain peaks, Turkey has now entered 20 kilometers deep into the Kurdistan Region.